…I believe the wrongs of this world are much more banal than we often allow ourselves to accept.

At the same time, I can’t help but see a connection between Fianna Fáil’s no-confidence motion against the Tánaiste, in the midst of an important Oireachtas committee on the Eighth Amendment, and the notion that their TDs represent this country’s most staunchly anti-choice political movement.

(Not that Fine Gael are any better, mind, as they’re two sides of the same coin, but how and ever.)

It’s also nearly farcical that the excuse for ‘Why now?’ amounts to ‘But her emails!’

Let me be clear: this is no defence of Frances Fitzgerald. She and others in Government have long been accused of involvement to varying degrees in the Garda scandal mess, so this stuff isn’t coming out of nowhere.

I simply find it curious that matters of such apparently grave import have come to a head right here, right now, in a fashion that threatens to sweep away questions for the future of this country that some with a vested interest in a phantom past would prefer not be considered.

Update 2017.11.28: Well, this didn’t age well. I still believe the above was a motivation for Fianna Fáil threatening to bring down the Government at such a critical juncture. But I have to admit that when it comes to right-wingers of their ilk, craven opportunism comes first: they smelt blood and they went in for the kill, damn the consequences.

So we’re back to where we were a week ago, except with a Government weakened by failure to do what was necessary and take the hit of its own accord. Alas, this country is run by fools.